Picked up with the action from the end of the last chapter tonight, and got 518 words on the new chapter (titled above) in about 20 minutes.
I’m building in the first part of the new scene, not really sure how it’s going to get me where I want to go yet. But one of my characters asked another a good question. That gives me something to think about and let perk tonight. Should have something interesting to do with the answer by tomorrow.
How are your words coming?
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Wow, Holly, it really seems like you’ve come back from your illness firing on all cylinders and guns blazing! I can’t speak for everyone on the board but you’re putting my writing progress to shame
I’ve been going through my HTRYN notes again and upon looking over ‘Magic’, I thought you might find this amusing. The seeds of my novel-verse were sown when my best friend and I discovered a fascination with the mysteries of D&D. We couldn’t afford the books and his big brother wouldn’t lend his copies to us kids, so we snuck a look at them, got the general gist, and then wrote out our own RPG dice systems, and worlds to go with them. One weekend we’d play my friend’s game, the next week we’d play mine.
We were about eight or nine.
And when I was filling out ‘Magic’ I realised that the progression of events in the novel I’ve just written is frighteningly similar to the first two adventures of my pre-teen RPG campaign. And the entire saga still plays out in essentially the same fashion. The characters and world are vastly evolved, and everything connects, but the bare bones haven’t changed in decades…
….
…I just realised something else. In the first adventure of my ancient campaign, the heroes delved into a subterranean dungeon and fought a dragon (hey, an eight year old takes it literally). In the second, they rescued an elf princess from orcs. In the third, they defeated an evil pretender to the throne and won the king’s respect.
And in my book, the heroes delve into a subterranean catacomb and battle a fire-breathing demonic…thing. Then they thwart an attack on a princess by a squad of vicious beast-men (not orcs, and a different princess, but the parallel is there). And my brand spanking new villain I JUST came up with is…a pretender to the throne who’s infiltrated the king’s court.
…*facepalms*
…So is it a good story?
From what I’ve seen it is. And I wasn’t there when you were 8. If you can tell a different story, but you want to tell this one, then I don’t think you should be ashamed of knowing this was the story you wanted to tell since you were 8. JMHO.
I hope you’re right, and thank you for that. I really don’t know quite what to feel about that revelation – a mixture of warm nostalgia and…aah..panic.
I’m learning how to protect my writing time the hard way. The marathon is going but I’m not done yet so I’m not posting word counts. I got the businessman back in the story. Now I have to touch base with the kidnappers, and then it’s back to the MC’s rescue party. My timer is my new best friend…
Timer. Yes. I LOVE my timer.
And cheers on protecting your writing time. It can be incredibly difficult.
1,488 words. I overshot my quota (1,000 per day) by a fair amount, but I didn’t write much yesterday so I figure this made up for it.
Holly, I’m curious: why do you only write Talysmana for 20 minutes a day? Is it a side-project while you pay the bills with another novel or writing course, and 20mins is all you can spare? Or are you deliberately slowing yourself down like you did with Dreaming the Dead, to stay on pace with everyone who’s writing a book with you?
Julian–right now it’s a bit of both.
When I put Dreaming the Dead on hold, it was because I was writing How To Revise Your Novel, and the 70-hour nonfiction work weeks made the enormous complexity of that book too much to keep up with.
I designed a more linear project, and put myself on Write A Book With Me pace (250-500 words) to maintain what I’d been doing with Dreaming The Dead, and to continue to demo that you can write a complete book in a surprisingly short time (if you don’t end up with a five-month vacation, anyway) writing easily achievable amounts in limited writing time.
Then we moved for the second time in two years, and my daughter moved, and following the chaos of those two moves, I developed BPPV, or benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, plus daily migraines—and I couldn’t work at all.
That was a few months ago.
I’m getting better, but I’m still not all the way back to full energy, so my work time is compromised.
I have an enormous backlog of things that came in during the time I couldn’t work that I now catching up with.
I’m also moving ALL my writing teaching I’ve created over the years (except for the articles and my writing diary on HollyLisle.com) to a single location so that all the free courses, the small paid courses, and the big courses will be in one school.
I still have two bonuses promised for How To Write Your Novel, and some variant of a walkthrough for students in How To Think Sideways.
So I’m working 20 minutes a day on the story for ALL of those reasons.